Bad Things Happen, Life is Short, Prep Hard Anyway

Bad Things Happen

Things have been rough around my house the past few days since we found out that my brother-in-law passed away in a freak fishing accident. Long story short, two of my brothers-in-law were fishing off a cliff edge in Hawaii (they live there) when the one fell off the edge and drowned. The other brother actually jumped in to save him but couldn’t do so. Needless to say, my wife, her parents, and her siblings are taking it hard and our lives have been very stressful with a lot of tears shed. As he was younger than I (in his early 30’s) his passing on does put death in my thoughts lately.

Yes, bad things happen.

Life is Short

It’s amazing how short life is. Even if you live to be a ripe old age of 115 it’s still not nearly enough time to do God’s work. That said, it does also make me think of so many people that I’ve known who have passed away far too early, from people literally dying while exercising, to friends and family younger than I who suffered fatal heart attacks to a friend who, on his last day of work before retirement, had a massive heart attack and died right there in the cafeteria lunch line.

These are just a few personal examples, though, there are plenty more including the Sandy Hook tragedy, the Colorado movie theatre shooting, soldiers dying on the battle front every day, or even a myriad of individuals I don’t know who die from any number of fatal diseases. None of it makes much sense to me… never has, never will.

Yes, life is short.

Prep Hard Anyway

A week or two ago I wrote a post about What if the Mistake is With Preparation? where I questioned why in the world I spend so much time, effort, and money on my preps. I probably knew the answer all along and some of you so graciously commented explaining WHY I should prep. I know that I should prep and I doubt I will ever change my ways but I do occasionally question my sanity. 😉

It seems to me that there is so very little we can control in the grand scheme of life, from untimely deaths such as that of my brother-in-law to whatever our lawmakers and those who actually pull the strings have in store for us. Fortunately, one of the few things that we really can control in our lives is our preps…

For example, while I can’t control the stock market (and I’m certainly not smart enough to figure it out) I can control where my money goes which, in my case, is occasionally to equipment and food that my family can use in hard times. Likewise, though I may not be able to control whether there’s any food at the grocery store I can control my ability to feed my family should that ever happen, at least, for a short period of time. Certainly, there are plenty of other examples as to why prepping can prove useful.

The point is to realize that, though much of life cannot be planned for or even remotely controlled, those few things that we can do we are obligated to do in order that we stick around for as long as we’re supposed to and, apparently, not a moment longer.

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